CATALYST

Catalyst is a global nonprofit supported by many of the world’s most powerful CEOs and leading companies to help build workplaces that work for women. For over 60 years, Catalyst has been a preeminent leader in helping accelerate progress for women through workplace inclusion. They work with a global community of more than 500 supporter companies, learning and sharing leading practices to build positive change.

BACKGROUND 

Events are a core component of Catalysts’ outreach strategy, consisting of online events, workshops, courses, and webinars. “Our program comprises a number of events, including our signature programs, virtual events focused on ERGs in the workplace, ten-to-twelve webinars a year, and roundtables that take place both in-person and virtually,” explains Lacey Rose, Director of Virtual Events. Their signature Catalyst Awards Conference & Dinner and Catalyst Honours programs celebrate pioneering initiatives from organizations worldwide. Lacey elaborates, “Catalyst Award winners lead a community of forward-thinking organizations that are developing new and impactful ways to advance gender equity in the workplace.”

Catalyst adopted Cvent in 2022, migrating all online events, workshops, courses, webinars, and signature events to a single platform. They now use Cvent for events of all sizes, formats, and types. Catalyst uses the Cvent Supplier Network, Registration, Event Diagramming, Exhibitor Management, Speaker Resource Center, Attendee Hub, Onsite Solutions, and Premium Surveys. They also rely on integrations with Google Analytics, SSO, the Salesforce App, and HTTP Post. 

APPROACH

Jumping headfirst into complex event management with Cvent

When Lacey joined, she says her team was in the midst of planning a complex multiday, multi-track hybrid event in multiple countries. “I really had to get into the thick of things with creating the very first event in Cvent,” she says. Luckily, Lacey had several years of experience using Cvent and was ready to jump straight in. They first implemented Cvent’s Registration platform so attendees could easily self-manage event registrations – including modifying or canceling their registrations with automated payment processing. This meant Lacey’s team could spend less time managing individual registrations and more time focusing on elevating the attendee experience. 

Catalyst also leverages the Cvent Supplier Network (CSN) for sourcing across a network of over 300,000 global venues. Their team can easily source and centralize RFP data, tracking rate information to help increase cost efficiencies. CSN also automates communication with NSO/GSO contacts in order to aggregate the most competitive rates and optimize sourcing activity. They’re able to harness automated analytics and reporting to maximize savings for the nonprofit. 

To help manage space diagramming, Cvent Event Diagramming (CED) and photo-realistic 3D let Lacey’s team experience meeting space without traveling onsite – giving them the freedom to experiment with room layouts and creative design ideas in a to-scale online environment. This streamlines the planning process and creates real-time collaboration between Catalyst and their venue partners. Further, CED allows Catalyst to create an accurate depiction of various spaces with details like furniture and other objects. The team can design set-ups with accurately scaled floor plans, manage seating and meal preferences efficiently, and sync registration data into CED for automated workflows. The tool also ensures clients are able to collaborate in real-time and see the most up-to-date renderings to ensure accuracy. 

Building Catalyst supporter engagement with Attendee Hub

Leveraging solutions that seamlessly integrate with one another has been a key factor in Catalyst’s success. Once their space is designed and attendees are registered, Catalyst turns to Cvent’s Attendee Hub as the central resource for registrants to manage their schedule, view session and speaker details, and network with fellow attendees. Whether they join via the web platform or the Event App onsite, features like live polling, chat, and Q&A keep attendees engaged throughout the event. By leveraging gamification, Catalyst can drive certain behaviors to increase targeted engagement. They’re also able to use event and session-level surveys for valuable feedback, giving them a more complete view of attendee interests and insights. Lacey’s team can also combine this data with engagement scoring for better follow up post-event.

Producing broadcast-ready content with Cvent Studio

To produce high-quality content in Attendee Hub, Lacey’s team turned to Cvent Studio. The advanced video production solution helped Catalyst easily capture and produce broadcast-quality video content for virtual attendees. “Studio was such a huge help because not only did we have a reliable system we could use to have the production value we needed, but we were able to pre-record, which relieved a lot of the tension and stress of having speakers live,” Lacey shares.

Studio enables producers to directly manage pre-planned segments, easily switch between one-click transitions, quickly mix speakers and media, and enable multi-user collaboration. It also provides easy-to-use speaker functionality where speakers can join through a single link and edit their settings, chat with other presenters or the host, and share their screen.

Lacey says partnering with her Cvent team and taking advantage of the available resources was her key to success. “There was a lot of working hand-in-hand with the Event Builder, with our producer for Cvent Studio, and really just using the Cvent Community to ramp up my knowledge for that first event, as it was more intricate than anything I had done before,” she says. “The best thing I could suggest is to really work hand-in-hand with Cvent; there’s a wealth of knowledge there for you and the more you learn from your partners at Cvent, the more you can bring to your organization.”

Elevating the Catalyst event experience for attendees and stakeholders

Lacey’s team also improved their previously manual processes for managing speakers and sponsors by using the Speaker Resource Center and Exhibitor Management tools. The Speaker Resource Center centralizes all speaker activities within a single portal, allowing speakers to self-serve tasks like updating bios and uploading assets. Automated task reminders eliminate manual back-and-forth saving valuable time for Lacey’s busy team.

Similarly, Exhibitor Managementensures all exhibitors can self-manage tasks, access reports, and oversee booth staff requirements in the centralized Exhibitor Portal. They can view floor plans with their booth allotments, upload documentation, and manage appointments as admins. Automated tasks ensure exhibitors stay on target with deadlines and deliverables, and comprehensive on-demand reporting mean exhibitors can easily track lead generation to better prove ROI.

Onsite, OnArrival creates a fast and seamless check-in and badging experience. Attendees can check-in via a QR code or quick iPad search to receive their badge in seconds – eliminating queues and reducing wasted badge stock. They’re also able to track onsite attendance to show event progress in real time. Having insights into attendance patterns via the OnArrival app means Catalyst can now better tailor their content each year.

In addition, a Google Analytics integration helps Catalyst track website traffic across their event and registration sites, generating dozens of different reports with detailed fields for page views, visitor tracking, benchmarking, time on site, and more. They’re able to connect these metrics to campaign performance with customized dashboards to fully evaluate what success looks like. With these and other integrations, they’re now able to track overall marketing and sales engagement to enhance their program strategy and continue growing their events.

RESULTS & LOOKING FORWARD

Lacey’s team is able to measure overall event success through on-demand reporting in Cvent – including session data, attendee tracking, and comparison reports. They use Cvent’s Access Portal to house custom reports, event and survey results, event calendars, and more. Lacey’s team can set visibility parameters to ensure stakeholders see the data that is most relevant to them, meaning they can self-serve without waiting on Lacey’s team to manually pull and send reports. “Our internal teams were beyond excited to have this information at their fingertips, and we were not longer spending hours pulling individual reports for dozens of people,” says Lacey. “It not only makes my job easier, but makes their job easier as well because they can find the information they need anytime they want – freeing up time for them to focus on those supporters.”

In fact, Catalyst’s most recent Awards Conference & Dinner saw over 1,800 registrations and more than 1,450 check-ins, with 20 sponsors and more than 1,250 logins to Attendee Hub. They’ve significantly advanced the attendee experience while leveraging data to make more informed decisions, optimize event strategies, and measure event success. By optimizing their use of Cvent, Catalyst has hosted more than 100 events and collected over 12,000 registrations to date. 

Lacey says she’s proud of the success of Catalyst’s growing events program, particularly as she looks at what they’ve achieved over the last few years with Cvent. As she looks forward to their continued growth, Lacey notes her team is aiming to expand their programs internationally. With this in mind, she looks forward to continuing to leverage the right event technology to help grow Catalyst’s robust events program.